The 700,000 emails were sent at about 2:30 p.m. EDT on Feb. 23, 2012. The senders were AwesomePennyStocks.com and PennyStocksUniverse.com, a pair of affiliated stock promotion websites that touted penny stocks to potential investors.

The must-buy on this day was America West Resources Inc., a small coal-mining outfit headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. Its shares typically traded for about 29 cents each. The company seldom attracted much investor interest.

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But Feb. 23, 2012, was different, according to documents filed last week by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in a federal court in Manhattan. The America West promo was an alleged scam. Its mastermind: John Babikian, a 26-year-old Montrealer with multiple passports and whose whereabouts, at present, are unknown.

The young stock pusher fled Canada in 2012 after being charged with tax evasion. He is believed to possess passports from Guatemala, Lebanon and Nevis and was last reported — by his wife’s divorce lawyer — to be in Monaco.

His now-frozen U.S. assets include two houses, one in Los Angeles he reportedly purchased for $2.2-million, an agricultural property in Oregon and an ownership stake in a private airplane. His luxury car collection, meanwhile, consisted of a Bugatti Veyron — a million-dollar sports car capable of accelerating from zero to 96.6 km/h in 2.5 seconds — a Lamborghini and a Bentley. (Revenue Quebec previously obtained a court judgment to seize some of Mr. Babikian’s assets relating to a claim he owed them close to $5-million in unpaid taxes.)

Mr. Babikian got rich, authorities allege, by what is known in the business as pumping-and-dumping stocks. He was behind the websites and the 700,000 email push hyping America West.

That Feb. 23, 2012, electronic sales promotion triggered a trading frenzy around the obscure mining stock, pushing America West’s share price to $1.38 — an all-time high — within 90 minutes. It is a window of time, the court documents state, that Mr. Babikian used to sell his 1.4 million shares in the company through a Swiss bank, pocketing a tidy $1.9-million profit for his efforts all the while neglecting to disclose to other potential investors that he was the man behind the promotion — and a major shareholder in America West.

‘We have had an AWESOME run over the last few years … However, there comes a time when all things come to an end’

“In the immediate aftermath of Babikian’s email launch more than 7.8 million shares of America West stock was traded as America West’s share price hit an all-time high,” the SEC stated in a March 14 media release outlining a U.S. federal court’s decision to freeze Mr. Babikian’s assets.

“Absent the fraudulent touts, Babikian could not have sold more than a few thousand shares at an extremely lower share price.”

(America West was not accused of any wrongdoing in the Babikian case)

Mr. Babikian, allegedly, was an old hand at pumping-and-dumping stocks. Pump-and-dump is market shorthand for a stock promoter who aggressively hypes a stock to investors, transforming an ugly duckling into a surefire moneymaker. The stock price balloons. The promoter sells his stock. The stock, worthless in reality or thereabouts, crashes back to Earth.

(Stock promotion is not a crime in the U.S. Manipulating the stock market is).

A Bloomberg News investigation tracked America West and 38 other penny stocks Awesome Penny Stocks promoted over a five-year span and found the buzz generated by Mr. Babikian’s email blasts boosted the “combined value of the stocks by as much as $3-billion.”

Most of the stocks Mr. Babikian touted, which briefly rocketed to great heights, relatively speaking, are now worth pennies.

Rival promoters marveled at the volume of business Awesome Penny Stocks was able to generate while never knowing who was actually behind the site.

“It was always kind of a mystery,” Peter Nicosia, a stock promoter, told Bloomberg. “They had the market cornered.”

Awesome Penny Stocks posted a notice on its website in October, 2013.

“Together, we have had an AWESOME run over the last few years,” the notice said. “We have seen multiple picks soar dramatically from our initial alerts…

“However, there comes a time when all things come to an end. Now is that time.”